Ataraxis
by Ericka Jane
Summary: 7.17 tag. In which Sam and Dean clean up in the aftermath of the hospital.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**: I apologize for my absence. I've been really lacking creative energy lately. It's been months since I've drawn or painted anything, and you all know how slow I've been on the writing front. It kinda sucks, to be honest. Just know that my unintended hiatus was, well, unintended, and I have every intention of finishing my WIPs.

**Notes**: Nothing plot-heavy or profound here. It's mostly just them being tired and smarmy and angsty, and dealing with Sam's fingernails. I'm not labeling this as complete just yet because I have a few other 7.17 plot bunnies that I might put to use. If I do I'll just add them here.

**Warnings**: 7.17 spoilers, language.

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><p>"Got them sad eyes<br>Got them cat eyes  
>Got the angels tired<br>Of saving his life."

-Citizen Cope, _Lifeline  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Ataraxis<strong>

Dean hates it, but they have to drive. They're too close to dead demon vessels, too close to the hospital he just stole Sam from, too close to _everything _to stay in town. They have to ditch their current car too, so hey, add that to the list of things that sucks. They find a new car parked next to a wilting house covered in orange foreclosure signs. It's a gray, sun-bleached Cadillac Cimarron. The motor makes an annoying _clink-clunk_ sound every five miles, the interior smells like stale French fries, and the radio's broken. Dean's never hated a piece of machinery more. Sam's quiet and motionless in the passenger seat, cradling his hands protectively. Dean glances at the ripped up nails and grimaces, wondering if it hurts or if Sam even notices. Sam's awake but checked out, blinking slowly and staring straight ahead. If it weren't for Cas (God, _Cas_) coming back and stealing Sam's hell, Dean would be worried that the listless expression on Sam's face was his sanity slipping away. But it's not. Sam's just tired.

They've been driving for just over an hour, the Ohio border is some twenty miles behind them, and Dean thinks that this is far enough. Tomorrow, after they've both slept for fifteen hours, they'll burn some real rubber. He pulls into the first motel off the highway, right outside Defiance, Ohio. It's a two building dump in the middle of nowhere, but Dean can't even be bothered by it; if they have beds, he's happy. He checks in without saying more than, "One night, two queens," to the clerk. Sam's waiting when he gets back to the car. He's leaning heavily against the hunk of metal like it's the only thing holding him up. It probably is. Dean gently nudges Sam in the direction of room 8, while handing him the room key.

"Get inside, I'll grab the gear," he says.

While Sam stumbles into the room, Dean grabs the weapons, the salt, and the first aid kit from the trunk and leaves everything else.

Inside, Dean covers the window sills in careless layers of salt, letting it spill over the cracked wood to make small piles on the floor. He moves to the door and dumps an even thicker trail of salt in front of it, and then drags it so it reaches from one corner of the room to the other. By the times Dean's done, the room looks like a salt mine. Sam watches as best he can with half of his face smushed into the starchy pillow. Dean tosses the empty salt bag on the floor and looks at Sam and shrugs.

"Don't wanna take any chances."

What he really means is he just wants a small slice of peace, even if it's just for tonight. He wants to block off this shitty little room and let his brother sleep for days and not think about Cas, Bobby, Dick Roman, or fucking Lucifer. The only way he knows how to do that, the only way he knows to even _try_, is to douse the place in salt, and make it as safe as possible.

Sam doesn't say anything but he stares like he understands.

Dean sighs quietly, feeling weariness take over again. He fights it back because he has one last thing he needs to take care of before they can crash. "Lemme see your hands."

"Wha?" Sam slurs from his place in the pillow.

"Hands, Sammy. I need to do something about your fingers."

"Oh."

Sam slowly slides his hands across the mattress, wincing as the movement pulls on his damaged fingernails. Dean moves across the room and sits on the bed next to him, wincing as he looks them over.

"Gonna need to clip one or two of these, then all we can do is wrap them. Doesn't look too bad, though, should be fine in a week or two," Dean says as he moves to grab the med kit from the other bed.

He grabs the clippers, Bactine, and gauze, and sets to work.

"Ready?" Dean asks as he pinches the clippers over the nail.

Sam grunts in return, jaw tensing in anticipation of pain.

The nail clips off about mid way into the nail bed. Sam hisses sharply through his teeth.

"Sorry," Dean says softly.

"S'ok," Sam replies as he breathes out through his nose, "Sleep deprivation is a funny thing."

Dean snorts, "Yeah, this has been a real bag of laughs."

"Your hair and nails fall out, you hallucinate, your pain tolerance drops to nonexistent…all because you didn't sleep. Did you know that sleep deprivation is considered a legal method of torture?"

Dean looks up from Sam's nails, feeling acute sadness and helplessness wash over him as he takes in his little brother's beard and cut up face. There are smears of water right under Sam's eyes, as if tears had formed but had been smudged by blinking.

"That's fucked up, Sam," Dean says as he goes back to fixing Sam's nails, but he really means is, _I'm sorry you ever had to go through this._

"Yeah."

Dean clips the second nail and Sam jerks. Dean holds onto his wrist tighter, "Shhh, almost done." He pours Bactine on the worst of the nails and lets it dry before he gently wraps up the tips of Sam's finger in gauze.

"It's gonna suck while it's healing but hey, you'll be able to do a mean ET impression."

"Awesome," Sam murmurs as he pulls his hands back towards his chest.

"Damn straight. ET's a classic."

Sam hums in agreement as his eyes shut, exhaustion taking over. "You made me watch it like thirty times when we were kids."

"Yeah," Dean says softly with a half smile. He looks at Sam's closed eyes and allows relief wash over him. He didn't really have time to let it sink in at the hospital, but god, he finally feels like he can breathe again. Sam's alive and in one piece; _safe_, for the first time in months, and Dean…he doesn't really have words for it.

Tomorrow they'll have to get back in the fight; get back to hunting, back to figuring out what to do with Dick friggin' Roman. But tonight they're gonna be safe. Tonight, they're gonna be ok.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: This is a combination of all the remaining 7.17 plot bunnies I had left smushed together. It can be a continuation of part one or it can be its own little beast, whichever you prefer.

Warnings: Little heavier on the angst, a little heavier on the cussing, and a brief description of torture. Yikes. I know it sounds grim but I promise it's sweet too.

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><p><strong>Part 2<strong>

"I said brother you know, you know  
>It's a long road we've been walkin' on."<br>Alexi Murdoch - _Orange Sky  
><em>

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><p>Sam sleeps for 22 hours without so much as twitching. Dean sleeps for thirteen of those hours and then parks himself in front of the lap top, looking up all the information he can on Emmanuel Allen. There isn't much to find. There's a brief news article in the local paper about a woman finding a man with amnesia in the river, asking for people to come forward if they had information. There's some mentionings here and there on blogs about a magic healer who cured this, that, and the other thing, but it all comes across as just bullshit. Only someone like Dean would know any different.<p>

When he can't handle any more of that, Dean grabs his flask, walks out of the motel room, and sits on the curb. The sun's coming up over the near empty parking lot, staining the pavement orange and making the world look deceitfully beautiful. He spends the next half hour draining the flask, praying for Sam to be ok, wishing for Bobby to be alive, and mourning Cas for the second time.

It's approaching hour sixteen and Sam's still knocked out cold. Dean checks his pulse, re-bandages his fingers and smears Neosporin on them, and then cards a hand through Sam's tangled hair. The strands are greasy but Dean can't find it in himself to care.

He orders pizza an hour later. The delivery man cocks an eyebrow at the pound of salt on the floor but Dean just shoves a twenty at him and closes the door.

At some point he showers. Sam still sleeps.

Hour twenty. Dean re-checks Sam's pulse and gently bends his limbs a bit, just so he doesn't end up mummified or something.

Twenty minutes later he considers waking Sam up (but he's not worried or freaking out. He's _not_.) But he doesn't because Sam needs this, and if Dean wakes him up before he's ready and Sam can't go back to sleep, that'll be on him, and that is just the last thing Dean needs.

Sam finally wakes up an hour and a half later. Dean's on the other bed, turned so that he's facing Sam. He figured he might as well try to get some more shut eye while Sam was still out for the count but he couldn't sleep, not without knowing if Sam was really ok or not. When Sam opens his eyes he does it slowly, like he's waking from a drug haze. He blinks heavily a few times before he catches Dean staring from over the table crammed between the beds.

"Hey," Sam croaks, voice catching from over a day of disuse and dehydration.

Relief and fondness fill Dean's chest like a flood and he has to take a deep breath before he replies, "Hey, Sammy."

* * *

><p>The next day they're on the road, heading anywhere that isn't the Midwest. The car – a newly stolen Chevy Chevette – is silent aside from the quiet shifting of their jeans against the torn leather seats. Sam's still groggy and sore from being electrocuted. Dean's getting tenser by the mile, angry at his inability to out-run the knowledge that they left a helpless, <em>insane<em> Castiel with Meg.

"Think he's gonna be ok?" Sam's speech is slurred a bit. His head is resting against the window but his eyes are focused on the windshield.

Dean's jaw ticks, "I don't know."

"Do you want him to be?"

"I don't know."

Sam falls quiet. Dean's hands tighten on the steering wheel and he ignores the way they want to reach for his flask instead. He doesn't want Sam to talk any more. He doesn't want to think about Cas or where he's at or what he's done or what he sacrificed. He just wants to fucking _breathe_ for a minute. So of course that's when Sam decides to open his mouth again.

"He saved my life, Dean," he says in a statement that's soft and indisputable, as if the fact that Cas is holding all of the crazy now erases all the shit he broke, like Sam's wall.

Dean's jaw and hands tighten so hard he thinks something cracks, but he has to hold onto something if he wants to keep himself from doing something stupid, like punching Sam across the face.

"Shut up, Sam. Just…just stop talking."

For once in his life Sam does as he's told. Dean suspects it's just because he's too exhausted to argue.

A few hundred miles later they pull over to eat. They're half leaning, half sitting on the hood of the Impala, and it's still warm from her V8 engine. The fast food bag is between them, Sam's slowly chewing his burger, looking a little lost, and Dean can't really be bothered to unwrap his.

"Sam?"

Sam turns his head. The cuts from the crash are still there, healing but scabbed and red. The darkness hasn't quite disappeared from under Sam's eyes despite all the sleep he's gotten, and suddenly Dean just hates the whole fucking world for doing this to his little brother.

"What?" Sam asks when Dean doesn't say anything.

"Nothing. Eat your food."

He can feel Sam side-eye him but Dean ignores it, and forces himself to start eating his burger, despite the nausea.

* * *

><p>"Why didn't you wake me up?"<p>

It's a different motel, in a different state, and Indiana's no more than four days behind them. They're on their respective beds with beer on the table, and an old black and white film on tv.

"What?"

"The night you got hit by the car. Why didn't you wake me up?"

Sam's silent for a minute before he hesitantly says, "I didn't think you were there. I mean…I knew you were there, but Lucifer…he used to change the room, sometimes. So it'd look like the cage. And at that point reality was as good as gone, so," Sam shrugs, "Honestly I'm surprised the racket didn't wake you up. Think I ran into just about everything in the damn room."

That's when Dean remembers that he spent that night getting wasted because Dick Roman was still out there, and Bobby was still dead, and Sam was still crazy, and Dean just couldn't fucking handle it anymore. So while Sam's mind was slowly decaying and he was out getting hit by cars, and getting downers off the street, Dean was floating in a whiskey oblivion.

Dean has to lock himself in the bathroom and breathe just to keep from vomiting.

* * *

><p>Sam's cuts are nothing but red lines and his eyes are clear when he brings Castiel up again. They're in the Laundromat, of all places, and it's midnight so the place is empty. Dean's watching the washer tumble the clothes around in the soapy water while Sam works on the New York Times crossword. Finally, Sam throws down his pen, snapping Dean out of his trance.<p>

"Finally find a clue you can't out-smart, brainiac?" Dean asks with a small smirk.

"We're not gonna leave him."

Dean's expression closes off immediately, with his eyes narrowed and lips tightened.

"Sam…"

"I know he made mistakes, like huge, end-of-the-world mistakes. But he's our friend and he saved my life. He's sitting in a mental hospital with _my_ hundred years of hell in his head, with Meg as his guardian. We're not leaving him."

Dean can't find it in himself to argue. He doesn't even want to. He hasn't forgiven Cas for all he's done, but he does feel obligated to at least make sure Meg isn't offering him up on a silver platter to a demon lord or something.

Dean pulls out his cell phone and thumbs through his call history until he finds the hospital.

"Yeah, hi, I'm lookin' for information on a patient. Uh, My cousin, we brought in about a week ago…"

And maybe Dean just misses Cas and if the world doesn't end, he wants to be able to eventually forgive the stupid bastard.

* * *

><p>It's a week to the day since Sam left the hospital and he has his first nightmare of hell. It wasn't like this before. Before it was hallucinations of things that were in hell, or things that Lucifer thought were funny, or of just Lucifer himself, acting more like an annoying sibling than Satan. This is something else. This is things like flashes of torn muscles and burning skin and of forked tongues and claws dancing across his chest. It's of wire cat tails flailing his back and six-inch jagged nails being driven into bones and tendons. This is a memory of his first years in hell, where Lucifer was at his angriest and took it all out on Sam's flesh.<p>

When Sam wakes up he's curled on his side, screaming into his pillow case, which is drenched in sweat and clutched in his fist. Dean's on his bed with his hands frantically gripping his shoulders. He's saying something but Sam can't hear it over the pounding of his own heart and the sound of the whip singing as it descends through the air.

Dean's weight lifts off the bed and Sam hears the sink turn on in the bathroom. He feels his brother sit down next to him again, and it's followed by a hand on his arm and a cold, wet cloth over his forehead and eyes. Almost immediately hell starts to recede. His sweat no longer feels like slick blood, the room's more cold than it is hot, and the phantom pain in his back dulls to a memory. Dean's hand is still on his forehead, gently pressing against the cool cloth. Sam reaches up and gasps Dean's wrist tight enough to hurt and starts to cry, silent shaking sobs that are hidden by darkness and soaked up by the washcloth.

Dean's free hand slides from the cloth into Sam's hair, "I know, Sammy. I know. It's gonna be ok," he murmurs.

After that, Sam gets in the shower and turns the water so it's as cold as he can stand it. The room was still too hot and he could still feel hell clinging to his pores. He feels ridiculous. Hell's been rattling in his head for the better part of a year, he's been seeing Lucifer on a daily basis, and yet this one nightmare completely unglued him. It's like, now that he's not trying to stay sane he actually has time to remember what happened in the cage. And honestly, Sam doesn't know which is worse: the things his mind made up or the things that actually happened.

When he gets out, he climbs into Dean's bed, unable or unwilling to be alone, even if "alone" was just his bed a few feet away.

Dean just scoots over and doesn't say anything.

* * *

><p>"So, what now?"<p>

They're on the road again, leaving the motel and hell nightmares behind, driving nowhere in particular.

Dean shrugs, "Pick up some booze, maybe have a little steak. Find a job. Try to save the world."

Sam smirks with amusement, and it's deep enough that his left dimple shows, "Get Dick?"

Dean tosses a glare his way but it's obvious he's trying not to smile too. "Smartass."

Then he knocks the back of Sam's head and Sam's laughs, and for the first time in forever, things feel like they might be ok.


End file.
